by Sean Platt
Boricio ran from the basement, then outside into the night, frantically searching for the old man and finding him nowhere. The lights in the church were on. Inside, he could see that church was in session, and realized with a sudden, horrible certainty, that the preacher was probably giving a sermon, with the vial as the star.
He ran toward the church, and could hear the old man on the other side of the door. “Then let us open the doors to Heaven and welcome Him back into our world, Amen!”
The chorus of pews sang in reply: “Amen!”
Boricio charged through the doors as the old man opened the vial. He screamed, “No!” as Boricio charged him.
The vial’s liquid boiled from the top, spilling out and onto the old man’s hand, searing his flesh with an audible sizzle.
The Prophet screamed, but his voice was drowned by thunder crashing outside, followed by several strobing flashes of light, so bright it seemed like lightning was coming from within the church.
Boricio screamed as the world started to shimmer around him.
He fled the church and nearly ran head first into Luca on the other side of the door.
“What are you doing?” Boricio cried.
“I came to get you.”
Boricio had never been so happy to see anyone in his life. He threw his arms around his brother as they both began to disappear.
Luca was gone, and so was he, but they weren’t gone together.
For Boricio, everything went black, and he opened his eyes completely alone on a mountain, far above a city below.
The lights went out all at once as darkness swallowed it all. A second darkness, festering waves of smoke, clouds, or something unlike anything Boricio had ever seen before, spread across the sky, blotting out the moon.
A pair of gigantic, ink-black tornadoes — as wide as half the city at least — then reached down from the sky, twisting in a tango of anger, tearing the world by its roots as it spun, then slamming its plunder into mountainous piles, which were peppered across the thrashed landscape.
Darkness had come, and there wasn’t a damned thing Boricio could do to stop it from consuming the world.
Fifty-One
Boricio Wolfe
Dunn, Georgia
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
Boricio’s bald doppelgänger stood on his porch, calmly staring as though he wasn’t a barrel of Mardi Gras beads worth of fucking weird. And with the way Callie was just standing there beside him, it looked like she was agreeing with his side of the story.
“I’m giving you until the count of pre-cum to tell me what in the beer-battered bullshit is going on.” Boricio turned to Callie and jerked his thumb toward the bald fucker beside her.
“Captain Copycat can shove the fat of my fuckstick down his throat and suck on it like it was the sweet inside a Slurpee until he swallows my dishonorable discharge.”
Captain Copycat turned to Callie. “Wow,” he said. “You weren’t kidding.”
Callie shrugged, then smiled at Boricio.
Boricio moved his eyes from the Captain to Callie. “You wanna tell me what in the fuck is going on? Or why you brought a chewed-caramel-looking version of Boricio, who talks slow enough to make me think he ain’t learned to swallow fast enough to hurry his sentences, not to mention the two love birds behind you? Because this shit is just weird enough to be one of my fucked-up dreams. And if we’re in the middle of one of my fucked-up dreams, well then I’m apt to do all sorts of crazy shit. So tell me, Callie, am I dreaming?”
Callie didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Can we come inside?”
Callie’s calm made Boricio step back from the door. He gestured for the group to come inside without quite knowing why, thinking he would’ve likely killed Callie for the same calm in any one of the sweet minutes before Luca broke him.
Boricio pulled the gun from his belt and waved the pistol, motioning the four of them toward the table.
Captain Copycat turned to the love birds behind him and said, “Leave your guns in the van.”
The one who looked like a sissy didn’t say shit, but the one who looked like he grew up jacking off to Die Hard said, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” then nodded toward Boricio like he was solving a mystery.
The Captain shook his head. “That’s an order.”
“So, you have your own team, too, eh?” Boricio cackled, then plopped into a chair on his side of the table and held his gun on his twin. “My team is named Team Boricio, what’s yours? If you don’t have a name yet, I’d like to suggest Team Twat Waffles, though of course that’s just a suggestion based on a first-blush assessment of your team’s overall potential.”
Captain Copycat ignored Boricio, lowered himself onto the seat across from him, then looked him in the eyes as if he were no scarier than a scratch.
No one had ever held Boricio’s eyes like that before.
“Wanna tell me your name, or should I just keep calling you Captain CumCatcher in my head?”
The fucker then said the unbelievable.
“My name is Boricio, like yours.”
Boricio’s eyes flew to Callie as his fingers tightened around the butt of his gun. “Wanna explain what this fucker’s talking about?” He waved the pistol toward his doppelgänger. “Even if a fucker’s smart enough to look like me, minus his chewed caramel fuck face, there ain’t but one Boricio, at the end of the world.”
Boricio was mostly quiet for the next 15 minutes, perhaps for the first time in as many years, while Callie and the other Boricio brought him up to speed. Die Hard and Wimpy Dick joined the bullshit session, standing at the door while Boricio drifted from disbelief to fascination.
Most of those 15 minutes were spent catching Boricio up on the bare basics rather than the other Boricio’s personal history, but it didn’t take Boricio long to realize that Captain Copycat had enjoyed many benefits that had been ass-raped from Boricio’s life.
Boricio was getting tired of hearing Captain Copycat go on and on, so he interrupted him and asked, “Where the fuck are Charlie and Adam?”
“We were getting to that part,” Callie said.
“Well, you weren’t getting there fast enough.”
Boricio wondered what Mary and the rest of Team Boricio must be thinking upstairs. He wondered how much they could hear, especially since the conversation was fairly muted. He wondered if they knew about, or saw, fugly Boricio.
Even after five minutes, Callie still hadn’t said shit worth saying.
“So,” Boricio repeated, “once again, where the fuck are Charlie and Adam?”
Callie said, “Adam’s dead. He died before we got to Black Mountain. Charlie’s at Black Mountain right now.”
“Why?” Boricio said. “He didn’t want to come to the happy reunion? Or is this not a happy reunion? Let me know if it ain’t, so I can put the ice cream back in the freezer.”
“Charlie’s infected,” she said. “They’re holding him in quarantine so the infection doesn’t spread. They’re trying to help him.” She gestured toward the Captain. “Boricio thinks they’ll be able to cure him. He thinks Charlie will be fine.”
The Captain seemed suddenly impatient. “Where’s Luca?” he said, for the fourth time since coming into Boricio’s home.
Boricio growled, “Why do you need to see Luca?”
The Captain said, “Because he’s my kid brother.”
“How’s that?” he said. “I don’t have a brother. So, you wanna tell me why one Little Boricio gets to go to the market and have roast beef, while the other Little Boricio stays home and has none?”
That’s when Boricio remembered what he’d seen when Luca had gone in his head and “fixed him,” the other Boricio as a child — a seemingly happy child, adopted by Will.
The Captain said, “In my world, my father, Will, adopted Luca, just like he adopted me.”
Boricio said, “But this Luca’s from our world, right? The good one. Not your fucked-up under the
table other side of the rainbow fuck-all.”
The other Boricio apparently had more patience in his pinky than the real one did in his whole body. Because if the Captain was talking to him the way he was talking to the Captain, he’d have already cut the fucker’s head from his body, then left the whole lot of them to figure shit out while he found a place to go bowling.
The Captain said, “I’m not sure which world your Luca is from. But I must speak with him, regardless. I believe he is the key to all of this.”
Goddammit if the fucker wasn’t right.
“To all of what?” Boricio asked.
“To everything.”
Boricio swallowed, not knowing what the fuck everything meant, even though he knew every word was true. “There’s something you should know,” he said.
The Captain raised his eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Luca’s not a kid,” he shook his head. “Not anymore. He’s nothing like you’re probably picturing him.”
The Captain still had his eyebrow raised. Boricio wondered if he had just the one, or if the other was hiding under the eye patch. If it was, Boricio wondered whether it was raised as well. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Just what I said,” Boricio said. “Luca’s not a kid no more. I can’t explain why, but maybe you can, since you’ve apparently traded handsome for layers of bullshit I’m not stupid enough to peel.”
The Captain said, “Where is Luca, and what’s wrong with him?”
Boricio grinned, then shrugged. “Like I said, Captain Copycat, I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s been healing people, and every time he does it, he gets a little older. He’s been doing it a while, so now he looks around eleventy.”
Die Hard said, “That’s not possible,” while Wimpy Dick shook his head.
“Anyone want a ticket to see shit themselves?” Boricio asked.
Without another word, Boricio rose from the table, shoved his gun back into his pants, then said, “Hey you, Wimpy Dick.”
The guy standing beside Die Hard turned.
Boricio laughed. “You always turn when you hear those four words together? How about cum-catching cocksucker?” Boricio frowned, then laughed louder and said, “I guess you could probably count them words as three.”
Wimpy Dick said, “My name’s Brent.”
Boricio laughed. “Okay, Brent. I want you to walk in front of me while we head up the stairs and I lead you all to my ugly half’s ancient little brother. But I don’t like the idea of all you guys walking behind me. Seems like I’m leaving myself vulnerable, and not just for a reach around. Take the lead so we can get the party started.”
Wimpy Dick looked back at the Captain. He nodded, then Wimpy Dick said, “Where do I go?”
“Over there,” Boricio pointed toward the stairs. “We’re going up, then down the hallway to the second door on the right.”
Brent went up the stairs, then down the hallway to the second door on the right as Boricio followed behind. Callie and Die Hard went next. Fugly Boricio took the rear.
At the top of the stairs Boricio called, “It’s okay, Miss Mary, we’re about to come into the bedroom, but I swear on my you know what that shit is peachy. But keep your guns ready just in case some shit goes down, eh?”
Wimpy Dick looked back at Boricio, then opened the door when he nodded.
Mary and Paola were sitting protectively on either side of Luca, who was still lying on his bed, barely breathing and looking a million years old while doing it. The Captain approached the bed, then stared at Luca for a long while before shaking his head.
“That’s not my brother.”
Boricio said, “I told you he wasn’t from your world.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. I felt him, my Luca, here. Here with you. But now I can’t feel him at all.”
“Is that why you look like you just ate shit pie from the serving spoon?”
The Captain stared at old Luca on the bed and said, “I can’t feel my brother anymore, not on that bed or anywhere else. I’m starting to wonder if he’s dead.”
Boricio had a battery of questions to ask Fugly Boricio about that shit, but he never got a chance since the second he said the word dead, Boricio heard the screeching of tires and the death of an engine outside.
“You expecting anyone?” Boricio said to the room.
Die Hard looked bothered, and Wimpy Dick upset. Callie shuffled her feet.
The Captain shook his head as both Boricios went to the window.
Boricio peeled the curtain back and saw a face he never thought he’d see again.
Boricio whooped and hollered and screamed a high-pitched hallelujah, which ended in a whistle when he saw Charlie hopping from the driver’s side of another black van.
He turned to Callie. “Looks like your sugar must be extra sweet, seeing as how Charlie came all this way to play the slots.” He turned to the Captain. “Don’t feel bad. She wouldn’t let me taste, neither.”
Boricio whooped and hollered again, then left the group, not worrying if anyone was walking behind him, but hearing the whole crowd of them anyway.
He tore through the hallway, then down the stairs and to the front door, swinging it open as Charlie’s feet hit the front porch.
“Well, hell’s bells, Charlie Cheese Dick,” Boricio said. “Welcome the fuck home!”
Fifty-Two
Ryan Olson
Black Mountain, Georgia
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
“Please, kill me,” Ryan begged Lisa as she aimed the shotgun at his face. “Please. I don’t want to be one of them.”
The shotgun shook in Lisa’s hands, and Ryan could see the emotions spinning like pinwheels in her eyes. She wanted to do it. Wanted to kill him. But a part of her still saw him as human and not one of the monsters that had just butchered the woman and her unborn child.
She pulled the gun away, then sharply spun so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Kill me!” Ryan repeated, now shouting.
“No!” Lisa said, shaking her head and turning back to face him. “You’re not one of them! Boricio said you were different and I believe him. We need to get out of here and save him. And I need your help.”
“No,” Ryan said. “Go alone.” He shook his head. “I can’t help you.”
He was swirling with too many emotions, mostly rage, along with the endless clicking, beeps, and mutant shrieks swimming across the surface of his mind. Beyond the cacophony was something else — a bottomless hunger nothing would sate.
As Ryan looked at Lisa, he began to imagine how easy it would be to bite into her flesh, and taste whatever it was she had inside her.
He shook his head, closing his eyes, trying to drive the sick thoughts from his head before they drove him to action.
It was happening.
He was turning.
As memories of the mutant feasting on the baby ran through his head, Ryan felt another wave of nausea stewing in his guts.
Then he felt something else . . . a sick delight in the sensation of the unborn flesh in his — and the other mutant’s — teeth, ripping the life from its body and gulping it down like milk from a mother’s breast.
“We’ve gotta go,” Lisa said, offering Ryan a hand to help him to his feet. “We need to get out of here while we still can.”
“I can’t go with you,” he said.
“You have to!” Lisa cried. “I can’t stop them alone.”
“I’m . . . changing.”
“What?!” Lisa said, taking a step back.
“It’s happening. I can feel it.”
“No,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “No, you’re just trying to scare me so I’ll shoot you.”
Ryan forced himself to look at her, barely able to control his rising urge to bite her. He could sense her fear which further fueled his hunger.
“Fucking kill me or I will eat you just like he ate her and her baby!” Ryan sc
reamed.
He rose to his feet and started to walk toward her, eyes boring into her, glaring. If she wasn’t going to shoot him, he’d scare her into it. He had to end this now.
He had nothing left.
He was becoming a monster.
Time to die.
Maybe he’d see Mary and Paola in heaven, assuming heaven wasn’t as much of a lie as Earth had turned out to be.
He looked into Lisa’s scared eyes and stepped closer, just inches away.
“Do it!” he screamed.
Lisa stepped back and lifted the shotgun, aiming it at him, crying, “Please, don’t make me.”
“Do it! Do it! Do it!” he goaded her.
“Are you sure?” she cried, shotgun shaking in her hands.
“Please,” he begged. “Please.”
He closed his eyes, bracing for the bullet. As Ryan waited for death, he drew more thoughts from the mutants, the infected, Charlie, and the Darkness swirling inside him.
He saw that the Darkness was walking up to a house.
Is this where Boricio is?
The door opened.
Ryan saw the other Boricio answering the door, a wide smile of recognition on his face. Beyond Boricio, he saw another familiar face — Mary!
And there, beside her . . .
Paola!
They’re alive!
They’re here and alive!
Ryan couldn’t die now.
He had to get to them.
He had to protect them.
He had to say something to stop Lisa before she shot him.
He opened his mouth and cried, “Nooo!”
He was too late.
The gun thundered before the world went silent.
TO BE CONTINUED …
::Episode 18::
(Sixth Episode Of Season Three)
“Hard Reset Protocol”
Fifty-Three
Luca Harding
Saturday
